Every show we like to shine the spotlight on a hard working new Indy creator and invite them to attend the show as our guest. Not only are we delighted to welcome Graphic Novelist Benjamin Dickson as our Indy Spotlight Guest, but but we are thrilled to be hosting the launch of his new book “A New Jerusalem”

His newest graphic novel, A New Jerusalem, is a sensitively-observed story about trauma and family life in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Benjamin has had many short stories published in Britain, America and Germany, and has also co-produced several freely available graphic novels on the subject of Climate Change. He has done extensive arts-based charity work with vulnerable adults, including survivors of domestic abuse and PTSD, and believes art to be the greatest of all therapeutic practices. He lives and works in Bristol.

We are absolutely delighted to be welcoming back 2000ad artist David Roach to ICE Birmingham in September.

David was born in Cardiff in 1965 and from an early age he was consumed with both a passion for drawing and writing and a deep seated love of comic books. After studying fine art and Philosophy in Art College he started to work at the age of 21 on the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic; 2000Ad where he drew Judge Anderson and Nemesis The Warlock.

With American comics welcoming British creators in the ‘90s he drew and inked numerous series’ for DC (Batman, Star Trek), Dark Horse (Aliens, Star Wars) Topps (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) and Dynamite (Vampirella). For many years David has also provided illustrations for Advertising and games including the popular Dungeons and Dragons series. As a writer he has contributed to numerous magazines and is the author or co-author of 15 books including The Warren Companion (Twomorrows), The Art of War (Carlton), Lifestyle Illustrations of the 50s and 60s (Fiell), The Art of Jose Gonzalez, Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art and the Art of Vampirella (all for Dynamite).

In recent years David has diversified into storyboards working on the Warhammer movie and the Da Vinci’s Demons TV series. He is currently working on the Dr Who comic strip (which he has been with for 17 years now) along with Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson for 2000AD and a mountain of commissions for fans. In parallel with his comics career he also delights in fine art drawing and is looking forward to his first solo exhibition .

He still lives and works in Cardiff where he shares a house with more books, comics and magazines than is entirely sensible.

This year David has also agreed to deliver a drawing class for Comics Uncovered for those lucky enough to be attending for the conference alongside ICE. More details of this amazing opportunity for aspiring artists will be announced on the Comics Uncovered facebook page in a couple of weeks.

We are delighted to be welcoming long time Beano artist Laura Howell to our guest list here at ICE Birmingham as she’ll be joining our other Beano legends at the special celebratory retrospective panel at the expo.

Laura Howell likes drawing and writing comics that make people laugh. In 2006 she became the first female artist to draw for the Beano, which she still contributes to every week. She has also worked on VIZ, the DFC, MAD magazine and popular media titles such as Angry Birds and Cartoon Network’s Regular Show and Uncle Grandpa.

Her first Regular Show graphic novel, “Wrasslesplosion”, was published by BOOM Studios in 2017 and her second, “The Meatening”, is out in 2018. Her own extremely silly comic strip “The Bizarre Adventures of Gilbert & Sullivan” is also available in book form from Soaring Penguin Press.

We are always very excited to welcome back previous Comics Uncovered delegates, who have become successful in comics as they share their stories with our new delegates and this year we are delighted to welcome back 2000ad artist Eoin Coveney for the weekend as our special guest.

Eoin originally began his comics journey in the mid 90’s, when he pencilled a graphic novel under the creative direction of Will Eisner. He then spent several years in the advertising industry, story boarding for TV and print campaigns. Since 2005, he has moved back into publishing and editorial illustration and comics, contributing to magazines such as FHM, ZOO, Attitude, E&T and Fabulous. He has also been published by Pearson, Harper­ Collins, Dorling Kindersley & Oxford University Press.

Since 2013, he has been a regular contributor to 2000AD, drawing Judge Dredd and Future Shocks, also being published in the Judge Dredd Megazine.

In 2015, he was co- creator of The Alienist with writers Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby which recently completed its second series in 2000AD.

Most recently, he has been working with the U.S. network PBS, producing web comics for their online content.

Eoin will be conducting a talk at our sister event Comics Uncovered on Saturday 15th September chronicling his journey from aspiring artist to respected professional and imparting the benefit of his experiences to those attending the conference.

We are absolutely delighted to welcome the hugely talented painter and comic artist Ben Oliver to ICE this September as our guest.

Ben has been producing stunning art for comics at a professional level for 18 years now, and has worked for many of the major publishers including Marvel, DC and 2000ad on some of their most popular and iconic characters including The Justice League, X-men and Judge Dredd.

As well as working as penciller on interiors Ben’s distinctive and realistic painting style has graced the covers of tiles like Ultimate X-men, Action Comics, Bat-woman & recently Batman Rebirth variants.

He’s also produced some incredible movie homage pieces on his website that have had fans salivating, featuring characters from Aliens, Star Wars and Bladerunner.

Ben will be signing, selling prints and taking commissions for sketches at the convention all day so be sure to drop by his table and grab some amazing artwork.

After he had such a great time at ICE Margate in April, veteran artist and inker Rodney Ramos will be returning to our shores to meet fans in Birmingham in September and we could not be more delighted to welcome him back.

Rodney Ramos has been a professional comic book illustrator for over 25 years . He began his career at Marvel comics as a Romita’s Raider doing art corrections under the direction of the legend John Romita. He started penciling for Marvel on such titles as Marvel Presents ,Psi-Force, What-If , Thundercats and Conan.

He then went on to inking a variety of books like Punisher War Journal , Amazing Spider-man , and Ironman. Over the years he has worked for many clients including Marvel , Marvel U.K , DC Comics ,Valiant ,Malibu , Acclaim, Disney Publishing ,and Neal Adam’s Continuity Comics . He has worked at Legendary Pictures Comics on Tower Chronicles with Matt Wagner and Simon Bisley.

His inks have graced over 500 issues on titles such as The Amazing Spider-man , X-men, Ironman, Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman, JSA, JLA , Countdown, 52 and the critically acclaimed Transmetropolitan with Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. Recently he has worked on Independence Day Resurgence and the Normandy Gold series along with some Dr.Who covers for Titan Comics.

Rodney will be taking advanced commissions and the details will be added to our prices page.

Undoubtedly one of the world’s most famous and long running comic titles is the legendary kids comic The Beano.

And this year we celebrate it’s 80th year of publication with a special panel featuring some of the most famous artists to work on the comic.

With this in mind we are very excited to announce our latest confirmed guest as the official Dennis The Menace artist Nigel Parkinson.

As well as being the official cartoonist of The Beano’s Dennis the Menace, Bash Street Kids, Bananaman and Roger the Dodger he also writes and draws Minnie the Minx and draws or has drawn most other Beano and Dandy characters at some time or other.

He was responsible for writing and drawing the acclaimed “Harry Hill’s Adventures in TV Land” for The Dandy. He’s also drawn Thunderbirds, Grange Hill, Baywatch, Stingray, Count Arthur Strong, and many other titles over a 38 year professional career.

We are absolutely delighted that Nigel will be joining us for this very special anniversary celebration.

It’s exciting times here at ICE Central as we announce that our second overseas guest for the expo will be Alessandro Vitti artist on titles like Red Lanterns, Doctor Who and – of course – ICEMAN (we resisted the obvious puns) The award winning artist will be flying in from Italy to join us for the convention this year.

Having been in the industry since 2001, Alessandro has worked with all major Italian, American and French publishers in the business.

He has illustrated italian comic books such as Brendon & Saguaro, for Sergio Bonelli Editore.

He has worked as interior artist on various popular books such as Capatain America & Hawkeye, Avenger Arena, Fear Itself: Homefront-New Warriors, Doctor Voodoo, Daken and many more for Marvel Comics and he is also is co-creator of Red Dread (Lateral Publish 2012), which is written by Matteo Strukul.

Probably the most important milestone in his early career at Marvel was his work with writer Jonathan Hickman on Secret Warriors, which really brought his unique style and excellent storytelling to the attention of the fans.

He also had an acclaimed run on Red Lanterns over at DC Comics working with writer Charles Soule which astonished critics and fans alike with it’s great characterisations and powerful art.

Alessandro has also worked with Pannini Comics on the mini-series of Gabriele Salvatore‘s movie, Il Ragazzo Invosible and for Titan Comics with writer Cavan Scott on Doctor Who

Last yeat he completed work on Mini-series Suiciders: Kings of HelL.A., written by Lee Bermejo, for Vertigo and was the interior artist on the high profile ongoing Iceman series back at Marvel.